TweakTown News Posts - Page 1

TSMC is seeing their production facilities completely taken over for cryptocurrency chip production, with Q1 2018 demand currently at very high levels for 12/16nm GPUs and ASICs for cryptocurrency mining.

DigiTimes reports: "TSMC has obtained the majority of orders for custom ASICs for cryptocurrency mining, but tight supply at the foundry has prompted several ASIC developers, such as Baikal Miner, to shift their orders to Samsung Electronics", according to their sources.

Bitmain has continued to push cryptocurrency mining chip production, overflowing from their orders to request TSMC to make mining chips for them. Bitmain are the #1 Bitcoin mining solution in the world, and have been making chips at maximum capacity for months now.

Atari's new retro-meets-modern video games console is now known as the "Atari VCS" and the renowned games-maker promises the system is specifically designed for today's living room needs.

Atari today announced that the Atari VCS (previously known as the Ataribox) will indeed be revealed in prototype stages at GDC 2018, and that official pre-order information will go live sometime in April. The $250 system, which is powered by Linux and AMD Radeon graphics technology, was originally supposed to go up for pre-orders last year and ship in Spring 2018 but was delayed due to specific ecosystem issues.

The Atari VCS aims to be both a throwback and "throwforward" so to speak: it can play both old-school Atari games and even has a classic joystick peripheral to emulate those golden days of gaming as well as newer games, but official details on what newer games will cross-over have been quite sparse. Atari has confirmed that indie games will cross over but it remains to be seen if the box is powerful enough to run, say, PS4 or Xbox One-level games (maybe Switch games?). The device is touted as being able to deliver the "full PC experience" to a TV, however for $250 it's a bit iffy that this is possible. Perhaps $250 is the starting version and Atari will offer a number of SKUs each with different specs...but all of this totally sounds like risky business to me.

Sony Santa Monica Studio's new God of War is shaping up to be 2018's must-have PS4 game.

Previews for the new God of War game are breaking across the internet and the results are resoundingly good: the game is being hailed as a triumphant return to the series that offers gamers tons of content to chew on it. The first three hours are described as "emotional and mature," strongly hinting we'll get hit with some serious feels at the beginning, but insofar as game length players can expect lots of activities that may even rival Horizon: Zero Dawn's huge playtime to keep them busy.

According to Geoff Keighley, who hosts the annual The Game Awards and E3 Coliseum showcases, Kratos' Nordic-centered escapades are going to be quite lengthy. "From what I was told we only played about 5% of the full game. If that's the case, this is going to be an epic on the scale of Horizon -- and with tons of weapon and skill tree upgrades, I can't wait to see how the game opens up in the other 95%," Keighley said on Twitter in regards to the three-hour preview.

Better yet, $35 isn't low enough so with a code [SKTT10%] here on TweakTown you can enjoy it for just $31.50. We're talking about 86% off which is a huge discount on a hotly-used piece of software from Microsoft.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016 is aimed primarily at companies and meets even the highest expectations. Containing the programs Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access and Skype for Business, Office Professional Plus 2016 meets all the requirements that are placed on an extensive office software.

Whether you create form letters,manage figures and tables, design presentations, create databases or want to organize your eMails - your professional or private projects can be done with the Office applications in no time. Download and activate product key here.

Note: There is an advanced option on MS download page where you can change 32bit to 64bit when downloading the installer. Make sure to do that or it defaults to 32 bit.

Now that pre-orders are up for the $799 HTC Vive Pro, the original Vive headset has dropped by another $100.

As an owner of the 2016 Vive VR headset, I can say it's definitely worth picking up (assuming, of course, you have the pre-requisite PC hardware to power it and the proper space for full room-scale tracking). The headset itself is hilariously fun and is absolutely fantastic centerpiece for parties or friend gatherings, and now it's more affordable than ever at $499. I bought my Vive for the original sum of $799 (ugh...) so I'm quite jealous of the would-be Vive owners of today.

HTC also announced that every $499 Vive headset purchase comes with a free copy of Bethesda's full-on Fallout 4 VR port as well as a free two-month Viveport subscription (again...why didn't I wait a bit to buy my headset?!). And of course the headset comes bundled with everything you need for room-scale VR including two lighthouse sensors, two controller wands, and a plethora of cords. The $799 Vive Pro, on the other hand, just comes with an expensive new-and-improved headset--no controllers or sensors.

At $799, the Vive Pro isn't going to be cheap (and it doesn't come with lighthouse stations or controller wands).

HTC today announced the new-and-improved Vive Pro headset will launch on April 5 for $799, and pre-orders for the VR HMD are now live. The Vive Pro marks the successor to 2016's HTC Vive, and features upgraded 2880x1600 resolution in its dual OLED panels, built-in headphones, dual front-facing cameras, as well as DisplayPort 1.2 and USB Type-C connectivity.

Microsoft continues laying the groundwork for a vast inter-connected web of devices to bring its games onto.

Rather than trying to beat Sony at its own game and push tons of Xbox hardware sales, Microsoft embraced its strengths and re-wrote the rules. Starting with unifying all Xbox One consoles with Windows 10 PCs, it transformed Xbox from a console into a cross-platform service that bridges multiple avenues. Xbox LIVE became the glue that holds the platforms together with tons of engagement and billions in monetization every year. And more recently Microsoft actually beat Sony at its own game with Game Pass, a $10 a month subscription service that includes a growing backlog of third-party games as well as every new future first-party Microsoft game (a value that absolutely smashes Sony's PlayStation Now game streaming service).

Microsoft isn't slowing down, either: it's plans are becoming more and more ambitious. At the end of 2017, the company actually started a cloud gaming division shortly before acquiring PlayFab, a "complete backend platform provider of services to build, launch and grow cloud-connected games". Before this Microsoft used Azure to accelerate games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on Xbox, and the upcoming Crackdown 3 to boot. Now the cloud gaming division will help foster these ideas and, eventually, likely build a games-streaming service that will beam Xbox games to all devices--from smart TVs to set-top boxes and mobile devices to boot.

Gamers have officially won the Battlefront II lootbox battle as EA makes massive changes to the game's progression and monetization strategy.

After months of tweaking, Electronic Arts has announced Battlefront II's new and improved live service purchases and player progression system. The "chance for pay-to-win" element of randomized lootbox gear has been abolished and replaced with a cosmetic-only marketplace that clearly shows what gamers will get if they purchase content. This marketplace will run on the premium in-game currency Crystals which are purchased with real money. Star Cards can't be purchased, and anything affecting gameplay isn't buyable with real money. Crates are still in, but are only doled out for actually playing the game and cannot be bought.

"With this update, progression is now linear. Star Cards, or any other item impacting gameplay, will only be earned through gameplay and will not be available for purchase. Instead, you'll earn experience points for the classes, hero characters, and ships that you choose to play in multiplayer. If you earn enough experience points to gain a level for that unit, you'll receive one Skill Point that can be used to unlock or upgrade the eligible Star Card you'd like to equip," reads the update.